Necarion

The Vorrin women covering their left hand is incredibly arbitrary. There are some weird taboos surrounding it that don't seem to make sense for the society, especially given the difficulties it adds to the life of the scholars/musicians. More, it's hard on lefties (WoB here), meaning it's the left hand, and not the non-dominant hand.  So why would the Heralds pass on that particular tidbit of wisdom and gender roles to society, compared to stuff like "bathe regularly" and "wash wounds"?

I think it might be sort of silly: one of the Herald women had a malformed, damaged, or mangled left hand, and always kept it covered (malformed is my main choice, since other damage would likely get healed). This mutated into a tradition of "women cover their left hands" in much the same way that "Radiants' eyes turn pale" mutated into "Lighteyes should be the elite ruling class".

Obviously this is sort of a crack theory, but I feel it makes as much sense as anything else?

What does a Radiant get from swearing her Fifth Ideal? First and Second were important power boosts. Third was the Shardblade (which was left behind at the Recreance) and Fourth was the Shardplate (also left behind at the Recreance). But there are no artifacts left behind that could plausibly be from the Fifth Ideal.

Obviously, it's some important power boost that is centered on the Radiant and those around them. There are probably the spiritual boosts (people are more likely to respect the leadership of a Windrunner, the judgment of a Skybreaker, etc) and probably some boosts to the squires and lesser Radiants. But none of these are really story-changing or spectacular enough. On the other hand, there is one thing that would fit a KR reaching their highest power:

They can Surgebind without having to carry or directly draw upon Stormlight.

The only 5th Idealer we've seen is Nalan, who can burst alight at any time, and Lift never once mentions him needing to breathe in Stormlight. Now, this might be from his Honorblade, which WOB says allowed the Heralds to directly connect to Honor's power. But the Spren copied the power of the Honorblades in crafting the Nahel Bond, meaning that, at least to some extent, the most invested KR are going to have similar powers to the Heralds.  Because they're tied directly into Honor, I think this power would not allow them to serve as a source of Stormlight for other Radiants or for spheres (as that would be OP).

Further, Lift herself never has to draw on Stormlight, but can turn it on and off in herself. This is partly from her weird powers, and comes directly out of her food supply. But she can choose when she wants to be Awesome or not.

(Weaker option: a Fifth Ideal KR can store Stormlight indefinitely, without loss, until they use it. This allows storing power pre-battle.)

Brandon once said that we have already seen how the Stormlight Archive ends, which clearly is in one of the death rattles. I strongly believe it to be the the Ketek at the end of The Way of Kings

Quote

Above silence,
the illuminating storms-
-dying storms-
-illuminate
the silence above.

The final shot of the Stormlight Archive will be an empty, silent Roshar as the Highstorm and the Everstorm clash and wither out, with silence both below and above.

 

More detailed thoughts: (I am not going to be able to find citations, but if anyone can help, I'll add them to the post). 

1. Erosion:

the geologic process in the formation of Roshar has been the steady deposition of crem during Highstorms. The entire continent is largely crem upon crem, which is why the entire thing is so insanely metal poor. And while the Highstorm has incredible erosive effects, it deposits more material on net than it takes away. The arrival of the Everstorm changes the calculus. We saw in the final fight of Words of Radiance that when the two storms clashed, the forces were enough to send entire plateaus hundreds of feet into the air. The erosion from this (and even from just the Everstorm, which wears away without bringing back) will start to wash Roshar into the sea.

Brandon spoke of this animation of the Julia Set as the inspiration for the shape of Roshar. I think there's more than just the shape; the growth and decay of the shape seem appropriate to the crem-building and eventual erosive weathering of Roshar.

2.  The story will not end with everybody on Roshar dead, simply with the entire sapient population evacuated through the Perpendicularity.

I don't believe Brandon wants to end this series on a true tragedy (i.e., the complete failure of the anti-Odium forces). And yet the Roshar system is the focus for so much of the conflict within the Cosmere. It seems silly (on a Doylist writer-based level) to have the series end with "Odium is still trapped in Roshar" since we still need some conflict involving the reassembly of Adonalsium. And since Odium has no intention of becoming not-Odium, there needs to be a way for him to get out somehow. 

Plus, it lets us have our Favorite Rosharan Characters showing up on different worlds.
(I desperately want Lift and Wayne to be friends. Wayne is the second most Edgedancer character we have met this entire series, and both Lift and Wayne are weird in part because of a trauma in their past, and are also actively trying to be weird, for better or worse. I think they will understand each other, be really good friends at a totally normal level, and help each other move past some of their other problems.)
I also cannot see Wax or Nalan having any patience for each other, and it would be glorious.

This is also going to be where the Checkov's gun of "something something Horneater Peaks, outsiders, something something" actually goes off with a bang.

3. Thematic parallels

This leaves open the possibility of a "The Real Asgard is the People" ending, where there is a massive loss (the entire planet is uninhabitable, Odium is loose), but still a victory from the perspective of everyone we care about (Life placed before Death). The Stormlight Archive is the Journey, not the Destination.

Roshar slowly wearing away into the sea (a process we will discover has become noticed and studied after our 5/6 timeskip) will be thematically paralleled with the Radiants slowly losing ground to the forces of Odium, at least on Roshar.

The Storms are central to the story of Roshar (Stormlight Archive). The proscribe the actions of all the characters, where they can go, how they can move, what gives them power. I believe that there will be a thematic arc of the Storms themselves that parallels that of the characters, with the relative balance of the Highstorm and Everstorm being an in-universe metaphor for the progress of the war.

 

I have a couple of additional thoughts, but they are specifically referencing things learned in Rhythm of War. I'm hiding them under spoilers, because I think this theory holds regardless (I've held it since the end of Words of Radiance, but there are new points that reinforce it). Mods, if you'd like me to move the post, I'd be happy to.

Point 1:

Point 2:

In an in-book question (asked as a gift for a relative who's a midwife), I asked:

"Would a Mistborn have to worry about accidentally burning her copper IUD?" and Brandon smiled, and wrote "Yes!"

So I think that burning metal outside of the stomach is still relatively natural to Allomancers.

Oh, that sounds like an entirely reasonable commute, I don't know what your problem is

Hi everyone!

I've been working on a project to set the poetry and songs of the Wheel of Time to music.  I have a number of pieces written and I can sing some of the parts, but I don't have anybody to play with. I've attached the only setting I have recorded: Mat's "Color of Trust" (from Lord of Chaos) which is sung by me, with my father on guitar.  

Are there any musically inclined fans (especially in the Seattle area) who are interested in getting together to play them together? Let me know if you're interested and what you sing/play, and we can plan from there :-)

P.S. I know this might be better in the Wheel of Time forum, but I'm not restricting myself to Wheel of Time fans.

Color of Trust                                - Voice/Guitar
Wind that Shakes the Willow        - Voice/Piano
Forward the Lion                           - Voice/Piano
As Long as the Wheel Turns         - Voice/Piano
Tia mi aven                                    - 6 voice round
Wash the Spears                           - 4 voice round
Life is a Dream                              - 3 voices
Soft the Winds                               - 3 voices

Color of Trust.mp3

If you ever pull a group together to sing it, shoot me a video!

I'm making a project of Wheel of Time music, "The Cycle of the Wheel" perhaps? So there is more to come

If anybody decides last minute they're interested (and we will go over all the parts!) I'll be wearing a dark mistcloak and carrying a pair of "glass" daggers, and will have the sheet music with me!

I have a somewhat unusual ask, though I realize these Fandoms are not completely orthogonal:

I recently composed a 5-7-voice setting of the "The Grave is No Bar to My Call" from Book 1 of the Wheel of Time, but because I am but a single humble Gleeman, I haven't heard it outside of MIDI.  I was hoping that if there was sufficient interest, we could try it at some point during/after Brandon's signing in Seattle this Saturday.

The music isn't terribly complicated, we'll go over all the parts, and I don't care about voice ranges on individual parts (except! the person singing "Moridin, Moridin" probably needs to be a bass).  Please let me know if you have any interest!  Also, if anyone wants to bring a harp, silver-chased flute (or perhaps merely a guitar), I've included the chord symbols.

Thanks!

"I will find the song, or another will find the song, but the song will be sung this year or in a year to come. As it once was, so shall it be again, world without end."

Tia mi aven - Chords.pdf

Tia mi aven - round.mid

8 minutes ago, jofwu said:

Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but this definitely means Taldain is in an unstable orbit. L1 isn't stable. Of course, keeping the planet at a Lagrange point is much more reasonable than Roshar's crazy moon situation.

As for Taldain's moon (Nizh Da?)... Yeah... There's just NO way it could precess around in it's polar orbit such that it straddles two halves of the planet. Just doesn't work that way. However... Are we sure it does this? I haven't read White Sand Prose. The moon is on the horizon in WS vol. 1, which fits this star map. But perhaps this changes over the course of the year. How else would Daysiders measure a year if NOT by using the moon? They can't see the stars and the sun just sits in the same spot. They have no means to measure the length of the year (besides heading towards Darkside) if NOT for this possibility. Unless their "year" has some other meaning. This seems unlikely, but fingers crossed? Is there a WoB to the contrary?

There is another simpler option for how they measure a year: a year is 12 "months" of a complete lunar orbit, which would be terms inherited from Yolan (or whatnot).

I think your term 'precess' works well for an alternate explation.  While a moon would be able to maintain a polar orbit in this situation, the orbit would not be 'closed' (i.e., return to the same location in its orbit every time).  Instead, a polar orbit would precess around the planet, where it could start by being parallel with the terminator and half a 'year' later be perpendicular to the terminator.

I don't know whether this is Canon or not, but the terminator should have some crazy storms as well.

4 hours ago, Argent said:

Re: RAFO on compounding

Huh. I wouldn't have thought this to be such a big RAFO.

I feel like this might be the most significant question for non-ascended magic uses in the Cosmere.  For example, having a large number of Breaths enables some impressive uses of investiture (see: Nightblood) but Breath is fundamentally a limited resources.  But if you can put a Breath into a nicrosil mind and then burn that nicrosil mind to get 2 or more Breaths out, suddenly the entire economic calculus of Nalthis changes. Preservation is a much stronger source of raw energy than Endowment, and even so, compounded Allomancy and Feruchemy is orders of magnitude more spectacular than raw Allomancy or Feruchemy. 

On 9/7/2016 at 10:42 AM, Ookla the Atypical said:

Ah, OK. Mind if I work on it and credit where credit is due, @Necarion?

Be my guest! I'd love to see what you come up with! (My notifications ended up turning off, so I am months late replying to this, my apologies)

Quote

Broken Sky - Leaning to Sel, but maybe Braize

Broken Sky seems like it points to Sel for a couple reasons: Brandon has noted that the cognitive realm over Sel is a never-ending storm of investiture due to Odium's splintering of Dominion and Devotion and (AU Spoiler):

 

17 hours ago, KnightGradient said:

I think this is a great idea.

Q: Is Hoids' immortality and health regeneration based, or is it through fiddling with Connection?

E: If Hoid were to drink punch, which was spiked(heh) with liquor, and he did not know it was alcoholic, would he get drunk?

C: If yes, then his longevity is due to Connection fiddling.

Interesting question, and could probably open up a decent line of inquiry.  However, I'm not sure how you would separate Connection-based from Identity-based effects?  And how could you be sure that connection effects, which may be left on for the purposes of communicating in a strange land, wouldn't work on the alcohol actively? We also don't know if Hoid's healing is some sort of active ward that he leaves on, or something innate.  However, I feel that after (N+1),000 years, Hoid probably doesn't slip much

I've noticed that Brandon is generally far more receptive to thought-experiment-based questions regarding his magic systems than he is to direct questions.  So I'm proposing this thread for Cosmere mechanics questions (i.e., not character/plot/worldbuilding questions) as well as potential in-universe experiments to investigate these questions in-universe.

Please post the question you want answered (Q), as well as the experiments you would perform (E) and potential hypotheses and how they would relate to particular experimental outcomes. Some of these will be easier than others, so I'd recommend secondary questions based on certain outcomes and/or possible consequences (C) of each answer (A).  The archetype for this thread is Krhriss' wonderful interrogation of Wax in Bands of Mourning.

Examples:
1) Q: Does aluminum block Steel/Iron Sight.
E: Take two equal-mass/shape metal pellets and coat one with aluminum. Can a Coinshot can see lines any difference in the lines pointing to the aluminum-coated one?
C: Can you use aluminum to shield valuables from detection or to smuggle weapons under the nose of coinshots?  Can aluminum be used to protect metalminds that are not embedded in the body?
A: No lines.  E_2: Does partial blocking protect the object from steelsight? How much coverage do you need? Is there a strictly line-of-sight effect (note: Line-of-Sight not required for protection against soothing)
    Lines equally strong.  Aluminum probably unuseful as a shield. E_2: Repeat with much thicker Al block.
    Visible lines, but less strong.  Is there a threshold to total blockage? E_2: Try with different thicknesses of aluminum, different coverages, etc.

2) Q: what happens to metals when they are burned?
E: Put an allomancer into a hermetically sealed chamber that is very carefully weighed during the process.  Have them burn different metals at different intensities and record the weight for the chamber.
C: Could you figure out a way to collect the metals that are burned and reuse them?  Is there any chance for long-term metal depletion on Scadrial? Can you recycle metals?
A: Weight unchanged. Metals not 'destroyed'.  E_2: Carefully filter air and test for trace metals.  E_3: Test to see if there is a weight-change _while burning metals_ to see if active use of investiture conveys any sort of weight change.
    Weight changes. See if you can use this to quantify allomantic burn rate among individuals. E_2: See how this change correlates with allomantic strength in specific contexts (I suspect that burn rate is uncorrelated with innate allomantic strength, even if one individual can push harder with a faster burn.  So TLR and Vin would use up their metals at a relatively similar rate despite a vast disparity in power levels).

Subquestion 2.5: Can you quantify Mass-Investiture equivalence with a sensitive enough scale?
E: (a) Carefully prepare two identically-massed metalminds and then Charge them to different levels.  Can you see a weight change?
C: Feruchemy is considered here in case allomantic metals are completely destroyed.  Note that this experiment would only be able to provide upper bounds for Mass-Investiture equivalence and couldn't be used to completely rule out 'no conversion'.
 

A friend and I were discussing Wayne and Steris' relationship, and we decided that there's probably a good setting for a series of short stories/vignettes about them as they increasingly become friends (of a sort).

 

Steris almost certainly has a list of possible things Wayne might do to irritate her, as well as ways of dealing with them. Wayne knows there's a list because it's Steris.  So the game would be: "Can Wayne do something to Steris that isn't on her list." Wayne wouldn't look at the list because "it would right take the fun out of it," and Steris would use the game as an opportunity to contain Wayne's chaos.

 

I suspect Wayne has spent some time in the Assembly, pretending to be a member, and having fun tying people up in silly votes and time-consuming procedural motions. I was enjoying the image of him attempting this on Steris, who would utterly crush him procedurally.

 

Anybody else have ideas for ways Wayne could mess with Steris?  I assume she has well-fleshed out ideas for what to do if Wayne infiltrates any of her social gatherings or hobbies, but there's room for Wayne to work, even there.

I don't know if it's obvious (though someone probably figure it out before me), but I think I finally figured out how TLR was such an unbelievably powerful allomancer during the Final Empire. In some of his interviews, Brandon made it clear that there's a compounding trick to getting supercharged allomancy, and the assumptions I saw seemed to think that to become a Super Soother, one would burn Brass and then store that allomancy in a nicrosil mind, and then burn that to compound, ad infinitum. Except that this particular explanation isn't very elegant and requires a BUNCH of nicrosil minds.

 

I think what actually happens is that TLR stores his Mistborn-ness in a nicrosil mind, and then burns it, getting the compounding effect, storing the excess back into the nicrosil mind. Then when he taps his stored "Full Mistborn Strength" N time, he becomes an (N+1)-strength mistborn, meaning that all the allomantic powers are now boosted by a factor of (N+1).  I get the impression that the metals themselves burn at a relatively constant rate (e.g., pewter on max flare runs out at the same speed, regardless of who's using it) but more powerful allomancers get more juice out of the same mass of metal.

 

Any Full Twinborn (Fullborn?) can probably do that with Feruchemy too, but it's not at all clear what the benefits of more Strength in Feruchemy does for you. Allows you to stuff more investiture into a metal mind? Reduces the amount of investiture you loose when you tap at greater than 1x?

 

The Bands of Mourning and all Derived (and Lesser) Bands (Bands of Mild Sadness?) are going to have a finite Misting/Mistborn capacity that needs to be recharged. If one wanted to break the Bands of Mourning so they would never be used again, you'd basically have to draw out all the ability to use Feruchemy and Allomancy, and then you'd never be able to do the compounding trick to restore them. On the flip side, you can give people Starter-Bands which just have a core of Full Twinborn in a nicrosil mind, and let people build up their own compounded stores.  No way this can possibly go wrong, right guys?

 

Related, but which Knight Radiant character would benefit the most from Full Twinborn powers? Windrunning is in some ways too similar to Mistborning, and Lightweaving is maybe too Orthogonal.

I would ask a slightly bigger question - if Brandon wasn't originally intending to write this trilogy, how did he incorporate a Shard vs Shard into the overall cosmere story?  Was this interaction already planned but in the background?  I'm not sure how to answer these questions.

 

Those are good questions.  It's possible that this Autonomy (possibly aligned with Odium) vs Harmony was plotted out from the beginning for the Second Trilogy (which was always planned), but Brandon decided to introduce it early in the Shadows trilogy. Since Shadows seems more strongly about Wax versus the Set and the rediscovery of Hemalurgy, the Cosmere-centric plots can be left as an ominous side-note (and possibly a way increasing the crossover value of the Stormlight Back Five).

 

 

I am unfamiliar with Chaos' theory of powers of the Southern Metal Tribe. From what I know (not terribly much) I would suspect technologically advanced, but Metallically limited, Southern opponents as opposed to another 51 independent forms of magic. Allomancy is strong, impressive, and largely neutralized if the Southerners discover Cryolite and cheap aluminum smelting. This would fit with the Second Law of "Limitations > Powers."

 

Related, does anyone know if aluminum foil can shield something from Steelsight? (I know it seems to disrupt the Allomantic Fields associated with soothing and Speed Bubbles)?

As long as reassembling the Weapon doesn't turn into a multi-book fetch quest, I'll probably enjoy how this turns out.

Literary analysis can often be split into "Watsonian" (what is going on from an in-universe perspective) and "Doylist" (what is going on analyzing the writer from an external vantage point) viewpoints.  The terms come from Sherlock Holmes, where Holmes' activities can be analyzed from the viewpoint of Watson ('Homes need to do these three things to solve the mystery') or of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ('Holmes needs to set these three things up to make the final confrontation possible').

 

When we analyze Brandon's Cosmere, we frequently take an in-universe Watsonian perspective, incorporating Brandon's statements as supplements to what's going on within the Cosmere. However, I think there's a few good Doylist reasons for Autonomy to be on Scadrial - i.e., "why it would make sense for Brandon Sanderson to write this way", and not "why it would make sense for Autonomy to planet hop."

 

Firstly, In the next couple years, we're going to get a White Sand graphic novel, which should explore Autonomy's magic system in-depth.  Having Autonomy become active on and shift his focus to Scadrial, especially during the Second Trilogy, would give us our first real glimpse of Shard Magics when the focus planet shifts. I suspect many of the effects of Autonomy powers will be unchanged in spirit (perhaps large-scale manipulation of rock or metal) but will require metallic input and will be changed in their details.

 

Secondly, we don't actually have that much left to learn about the Three Metallic arts, relatively speaking (not that they're dull, they're just much better understood).  We need to (1) explore a couple more feruchemy powers, (2) nail down the rules of the last two allomantic metals, (3) learn FTL, and (4) figure out the last details of Hemalurgy. While FTL is cool, it's probably a plot point that will probably be saved for the Future trilogy anyway. Learning the rules of Hemalurgy will be fun (and disturbing) but I don't know that it can occupy an entirely new trilogy. (In the first trilogy, we had Book 1 introduce us to the rules of Allomancy, Book 2 more closely explored Feruchemy, and Book 3 taught us about Hemalurgy (and that everything we knew about Allomancy was wrong)).

 

In contrast, exploring an entirely new Metallic Art while fighting Autonomy would allow a second trilogy to have higher stakes. Simply hunting a Serial Killer or even fighting a Cold War is fun, but not quite the same as "Ruin wants to destroy all life in the world" or "Odium wants to destroy all life in the world." But...Serial Killer plot set during a Cold War where one side is helped by Autonomy, who literally wants to Kill God?

 

 

Side note: I suspect that if Iyatil actually is on Scadrial, we might end up seeing Hemalurgy in the Back Five of Stormlight. Which would be terrifying and exciting.  Has Brandon said whether you would steal one or both of the Surges from a KR or the Spren itself?

 

1. Probably? Brandon likes to talk about how Iron/Steel follow the laws of equal and opposite reaction. What from the books has implied otherwise to you?

Nothing implied otherwise. But there are some interesting implications if it is rigid (i.e., Momentum conserving but not Energy conserving), and some very interesting implications if it is not.

 

Thanks for the feedback on posting spoiler information. Should I have said something like "general cosmere mechanics" before posting the spoiler tag?

 

New Cosmere personalities question:

 

Thanks!

I'm attending the Shadows of Self signing tour in San Francisco on 9 October 2015, and was hoping I could get some opinions on the questions I hope to ask. I suspect some have been answered, and since time will be limited, I'm curious how the community would prioritize these questions.  I'm still not 100% certain of the Spoiler protocols, so I'll mask them just in case.

 

 

 

 

 

Probably been answered:

 

 

Thanks!